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Amsterdam University Press

Series editors: Vittoria Feola, University of Padova; J.D. Fleming, Simon Fraser University; Cassie Gorman, Anglia Ruskin University; Stefano Gulizia, New Europe College, Bucharest; Steven Matthews, University of Minnesota, Duluth; Richard Raiswell, University of Prince Edward Island; Cornelis Schilt, Linacre College, Oxford.

The major premise of the Scientiae Studies series is that knowledge during the early modern period was pre-disciplinary, and that, similarly, theories and practices, confronted with a rapidly growing body of new objects, had yet to be separated into their modern ‘scientific’ configurations. As a result of such premise, this is a forum ideally suited to innovative interdisciplinary discourses and strands of intellectual history pivoted around the circulation of knowledge, as well as deliberately global.

By looking within and beyond European history, we would also like to accept proposals that respond to a foundational interest of Scientiae as an association, the institutionalization of knowledge, which in turn stimulates research on the history of universities and on the birth and evolution of early modern collections. Thus the series aims to bridge the gap between material culture and history of ideas.

While attempts to understand and control the natural world, and therefore natural philosophy and natural history, remain central to its endeavours, the Scientiae Studies series addresses a wide range of related fields, including but not restricted to Biblical exegesis, medicine, artisan practice and theory, logic, humanism, alchemy, magic, witchcraft, demonology, astronomy, astrology, music, antiquarianism, experimentation and commerce.

For more information, see https://www.aup.nl/en/series/scientiae-studies.

Please contact Erika Gaffney, egaffney@aup.nl, and Stefano Gulizia, sgulizia@gmail.com, with any questions, or to submit a proposal.

Source: RSA

Series editors: Bret Rothstein (Chair), Indiana University, Bloomington; Alessandro Arcangeli, Università di Verona; and Christina Normore, Northwestern University

Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

'Cultures of Play, 1300–1700' provides a forum for investigating the full scope of medieval and early modern play, from toys and games to dramatic performances, from etiquette manuals and literary texts to bulls and tractates, from jousting to duels, and from education to early scientific investigation. Inspired by the foundational work of Johan Huizinga as well as later contributions by Roger Caillois, Eugen Fink, and Bernard Suits, this series publishes monographs and essay collections that address the ludic aspects of premodern life.

The accent of this series falls on cultural practices that have thus far eluded traditional disciplinary models. Our goal is to make legible modes of thought and action that until recently seemed untraceable, thereby shaping the growing scholarly discourses on playfulness both past and present.

For more information, see https://www.aup.nl/en/series/cultures-of-play-1300-1700.

Please contact Erika Gaffney, egaffney@aup.nl, with any questions, or to submit a proposal.

Source: RSA

Series editors: Kathleen Perry Long (Cornell University) and Luke Morgan (Monash University)

Advisory board: Elizabeth Bearden, Professor, University of Wisconsin–Madison Jeffrey Cohen, Dean, Arizona State University Surekha Davies, InterAmericas Fellow, John Carter Brown Library Richard Godden, Louisiana State University Maria Fabricius Hansen, University of Copenhagen Virginia Krause, Brown University Jennifer Spinks, University of Melbourne Debra Strickland, University of Glasgow Wes Williams, Oxford University

Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

This series is dedicated to the study of cultural constructions of difference, abnormality, the monstrous, and the marvelous from multiple disciplinary perspectives, including the history of science and medicine, literary studies, the history of art and architecture, philosophy, gender studies, disability studies, critical race studies, ecocriticism, and other forms of critical theory. Single-author volumes and collections of original essays that cross disciplinary boundaries are particularly welcome. The editors seek proposals on a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to:

• the aesthetics of the grotesque;
• political uses of the rhetoric or imagery of monstrosity;
• theological, social, and literary approaches to witches and the demonic in their broader cultural context;
• the global geography of the monstrous, particularly in relation to early modern colonialism;
• the role of the monstrous in the history of concepts of race;
• the connections between gender and sexual normativity and discourses of monstrosity;
• juridical and other legal notions of the monstrous;
• the history of teratology;
• technologies that mimic life such as automata;
• wild men;
• hybrids (human/animal; man/machine);
• and concepts of the natural and the normal.

Contact: Erika Gaffney, AUP Acquisitions Editor, e.gaffney@aup.nl

Source: RSA

Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, 50th Anniversary St. Louis, Missouri, USA – 17–20 October 2019

Inventories are simultaneously reassuring to the historian and deceptive in their reassurance. Structured by institutional and bureaucratic processes, inventories are an important part of the early modern world’s legal and archival remains. These constructions stand as reflections of workshops, dowries, collections, and estates. Implicitly complete, but often partial, inventories can appear as notarized documents, casual lists, published catalogues, or cyclically updated asset sheets. Inventories challenge the scholar in myriad ways, while providing a glimpse into the elusive documented material past.

This Call For Papers is open to scholarly research focusing on any of the many aspects of research that have grown out of or that use inventories. Presentations could focus on the following issues and practices seen across the world from 1400-1700 CE:

• Big data: Probate inventories
• Deception and fraud in inventories
• Institutional inventories
• Seeing spaces in inventories
• Social class and material culture in household inventories
• Workshop inventories: tools, production, and worth
• Dowry inventories and wedding purchases
• Combining or dividing households
• Bills, payments, and loans: household accounts and inventories

Please send a half-page curriculum vitae, a presentation title, and a 200-word abstract of the proposed presentation to the session organizer Jennifer Mara DeSilva (jmdesilva@bsu.edu). In addition, please detail any A/V requirements that you might have.

All presenters must register for the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, be committed to attending the conference in St. Louis, and make their own travel arrangements. For more information about the SCSC, please see the conference website: http://www.sixteenthcentury.org/conference/

The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 31 March 2019.

Source: RSA

Lectio International Conference – 11–13 December 2019 – University Of Leuven (Belgium)

Dissent, polemics, and rivalry have always been at the center of intellectual development. The scholarly Streitkultur was given a fresh impetus by the newly founded universities in the High Middle Ages and later turned into a quintessential part of early modern intellectual life. It was not only mirrored in various well-known intellectual debates and controversies – e.g. between Aristotelians and Augustinians, scholastics and humanists, Catholics and Protestants – but also embodied in numerous literary genres and non-literary modes of expression – e.g. disputationes, invectives, consilia, images, carnivalesque parades, music, etc. – and discursive or political strategies – patronage, networks and alliances. Moreover, the harsh debates notwithstanding, consensus was also actively searched for, both within particular disciplines and within society as a whole.

The aforementioned genres and strategies are all modes of negotiating dissent, which raises several important questions regarding these intellectual ‘warriors’. What were the most important issues at stake and how were they debated? Did the debates in the public sphere reflect the private opinions of the scholars involved? What access do we have to those private opinions? Can we approach such controversies in terms of authenticity and truthfulness, or consistency and coherence? Is there a contrast between ego-documents and the published part of an author’s oeuvre? Starting from these questions, the aim of this conference is to study the polemical strategies and the modes of rivalry and alliance in scholarly debate from the twelfth through the seventeenth centuries. Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to:

• the role of alliances and polemics in establishing intellectual networks;
• the presentation of rivaling views and the depiction of adversaries;
• the discrepancy or congruency between private and public persona;
• hitherto neglected disputes or new perspectives on well-known controversies;
• non-literary modes of negotiating dissent;
• the relation and connections between various literary and non-literary genres, also across different semiotic modes (literature, visual arts, performative arts...);
• the role of socio-cultural and economic background in polemics;
• the role of language (e.g.: vernacular vs. Latin);
• similarities and differences across disciplines (philosophy, civil and canon law, theology, medicine...) with regard to polemization and the negotiation of dissent.

We actively invite papers from a variety of perspectives and disciplines (civil and canon law, philosophy, theology and religious studies, literary studies, historiography, art history, etc.) and aim to study texts in Latin, Greek and the vernacular, as well as pictorial and performative traditions. We do not only welcome specific case studies, but also (strongly) encourage broader (meta)perspectives, e.g. of a diachronic or transdisciplinary nature.

The conference will span the period from the twelfth until the seventeenth centuries. The conference will be organized by the Leuven Centre for the Study of the Transmission of Texts and Ideas in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (LECTIO). It follows upon last year’s conference on polemics, rivalry and networking in Greco-Roman Antiquity.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

• Leen Spruit (Radboud Universiteit – Nijmegen)
• Anita Traninger (Freie Universität – Berlin)

We invite submissions for paper proposals in English, French, German and Italian. Proposals should consist of a (provisional) title, an abstract of 300–400 words, and information concerning the applicant’s name, current position, academic affiliation, contact details and (if applicable) related publications on the topic. Applicants who intend to speak in French, German or Italian, are expected to include an English abstract as well. Accepted papers will be awarded a 30 minutes slot (20 minutes presentation, 10 minutes for discussion).

Please submit your proposal via email (lectio@kuleuven.be) by April 15, 2019. Applicants will be notified by email within 5 weeks from this date. Successful applicants are expected to submit their paper for inclusion in a thematic volume to be published in the LECTIO series (Brepols Publishers). All submitted papers will be subject to a process of blind peer-review. For any further queries, please mail to lectio@kuleuven.be.

On behalf of the organizing committee, Guy Claessens – Wim Decock – Jeroen De Keyser – Fabio Della Schiava – Wouter Druwé – Wim François – Erika Gielen

http://www.kuleuven.be/lectio http://lectio.ghum.kuleuven.be/lectio/conferences

Source: RSA